Matthew Lane

GREENEVILLE — A Johnson City man previously convicted in state court on child sex crimes has agreed to plead guilty in federal court on child pornography charges.

Ray Dwight Sluss was indicted in U.S. District Court in Greeneville in October on a four-count indictment charging him with receipt and possession of child pornography and receipt and possession of child pornography cartoons.

During a change of plea hearing on Tuesday, Sluss formally agreed to plead guilty to count one of the indictment — the receipt of child pornography.

Sluss was convicted in Washington County Criminal Court in May 2004 on two counts of aggravated sexual exploitation of a minor. Due to this prior conviction, Sluss faces a prison sentence of 15 to 40 years, a maximum fine of $250,000 and up to life on supervised release upon completion of the prison term.

A sentencing hearing is scheduled for June 5.

According to the plea agreement, from November 2008 through July 2013, Sluss searched for and downloaded child pornography over the Internet, using file sharing programs such as LimeWire and Azureus.

Prosecutors say Sluss also visited websites associated with child pornography and used torrents to download the files, which support file-sharing applications and allow users to move large amounts of data over the Internet.

Sluss would store the material on external hard drives, and the images downloaded depicted minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct.

The plea agreement did not detail the number of images Sluss had downloaded over the five-year period.